Get ready to eat this mouthwatering, aromatic brown rice beef/lamb biryani. Tender pieces of meat and perfectly cooked, springy grains of rice are coated in a perfect blend of spices.
Before getting an instant pot, I’d only make biryani on special occasions. Now, we can make this one-pot brown rice and meat dish on a whim.
I shared a recipe for chicken biryani a while back, but have gotten many requests for beef biryani and lamb biryani. I decided to use brown basmati rice in this recipe because it cooks perfectly in the same amount of time as either beef or lamb.
If you read my post on cooking brown basmati rice in an Instant Pot then you already know it takes 22 minutes. Thankfully, you can cook beef and lamb cubes in that amount of time as well. The result: tender morsels of meat mixed in nutty brown rice.
It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with my Instant Pot, especially when it comes to Indian cooking. In fact, I wrote a blog post with 5 Reasons Why Instant Pot is Perfect for Indian cooking. The main reason: what traditionally took several pots and pans plus several hours to cook can now be made in a single pot!
Biryani is an example of one of those recipes that used to take hours to make, a dish reserved for special occasions. Now we eat some type of biryani almost weekly – sometimes we’ll have shrimp biryani and other weeks we’ll enjoy egg biryani, keema biryani or veggie biryani.
Some background on biryani: there are two main methods to making biryani: pakki biryani and kacchi biryani.
With pakki biryani, you cook the meat separately and partly cook the rice then you have to layer them together then cook the whole thing together. A lot of steps, right? The only reason I would ever use this method is if I have leftover curry that I want to use (like my leftover goat curry biryani).
With kacchi biryani, you marinate the meat for a long time then cook it with the rice over low heat.
Then there’s my method. Skip the marinating and cook both the meat and rice together in ONE pot in an electric pressure cooker. This new method is clearly my favorite one. You get all the same flavor of traditional lamb biryani (or beef biryani) with the least amount of work.
That said, my method works with brown rice because the cook time for the meat and the rice works out perfectly.
I can’t wait to hear what you think of this dish! If you love it, then be sure to check out my Instant Pot Cookbook: Indian Food Under Pressure for more Indian recipes!
Instant Pot Brown Rice Biryani with Beef or Lamb
Instant Pot Brown Rice Biryani with Beef or Lamb
Ingredients
- 1 cup brown basmati rice soaked 15 minutes
- 2 tablespoons oil
Whole Spices
- 5 cardamom pods
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 bay leaf
- ½ cinnamon stick
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 pound beef stew meat or lamb the meat should be cut into bite-sized pieces
- 1 onion thinly sliced
- 4 teaspoons minced garlic
- 2 teaspoons minced ginger
Ground Spices
- 2 teaspoons coriander powder
- 2 teaspoons paprika
- 2 teaspoons salt adjust to taste
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne adjust to taste
- ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 cup water
Optional Garnish:
- 2 tablespoons ghee
- 2 tablespoons golden raisins
- ⅓ cup cashews halved
- Cilantro leaves chopped
- Mint leaves chopped
Instructions
- Soak the brown basmati rice in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain, rinse and set aside.
- Press the sauté button, adjust the heat to high, and add the oil to the pot. Allow it a minute to heat up, then add the whole spices and stir. Once they begin to sizzle, add the meat and the onions. Stir-fry for 5-7 minutes, or until all sides of the meat have browned.
- Add the garlic, ginger, ground spices and stir, then add the rice and water to the pot. Give everything a good stir.
- Secure the lid, close the pressure valve and cook for 22 minutes at high pressure.
- Naturally release pressure for 10 minutes, then open the valve to release any remaining pressure.
- Discard the whole spices, add garnish if desired and serve.
Optional Garnish:
- While the rice is cooking, melt ghee in a pan over low-medium heat on the stovetop. Add the cashews and raisins and stir-fry until the cashews begin to turn golden.
- Sprinkle the ghee-coated cashews and raisins along with the cilantro and mint on top of the biryani.
Merv says
I adhered to all the instructions and timings, but found that more than one cup of water is needed
M, otherwise you are like to end up with a mess stuck to the bottom of the pressure cooker. It was still edible, however a bit of a disappointing outcome. I used brown basmati rice.
Cheers,
Merv
Sonia says
Hi Ashley,
I tried your beef biryani recipe today after making your chicken biryani multiple times. Love both of them! I’ve a quick question, usually all rice or pasta dish IP recipes say not to stir the ingredients. This one says to ‘give everything a good stir.’ I didn’t, for fear of spoiling it. It came out tasty. Can you please explain?
Also, did you try to make this recipe with regular basmati rice? If so, what’s the time required? I prefer regular basmati to brown one.
Thank you so much!
Sonia.
Ashley - My Heart Beets says
Hi Sonia! I’m so glad you tried and liked this recipe and that you like the chicken biryani too. 🙂 For this recipe, I think because of the brown basmati, I wanted to make sure it was fully submerged – but even if you didn’t stir, as long as it’s submerged it’ll be fine. For a more authentic biryani, you wouldn’t stir – so you’d end up with layers of meat and rice, but that’s up to you. As for making this recipe with regular basmati, I haven’t tried because I believe it would overcook with such a long cook time. I haven’t experimented with a shorter cook time so I’m not sure how it’d go.
Taliohh says
I am just adding an update to my original comment for anyone reading this prior to making this recipe. The additional 10 minutes in the IP along with an extra cup of water helped with the rice softening situation but the recipe was still way too salty to eat. I ended up transferring the contents to a pot with yet another cup of water and a potato, cut into quarters to absorb the salt. I really didn’t want to waste this recipe. The potato helped a bit but not enough. I ended up adding a lot of coleslaw to a bowl of this recipe in order to eat it, but I’m sure I’ll still be drinking a lot of water.
The final consensus is that I actually would make this recipe again. The flavours are delicious but I would use a quarter of the salt and pressure cook it for at least 32 mins with a 20 min natural release.
Taliohh says
I had high hopes for this recipe considering its 5 star rating so I’m not sure where I went wrong. Admittedly, I could not find the whole cardamom pods and cloves but I looked up the ground substitutions. In any case, my issue is not with the spice flavouring. The recipe turned out to be intensely salty and the rice is crunchy. I’m hoping to save it by adding more water and running the instant pot for another 10 minutes but at the moment it’s sadly, inedible.
Bhargavi says
Hi Ashley! I’m having difficulty finding a vegetarian, instant pot, brown rice basmati recipe. That could perhaps be because the cooking time of brown rice is different from the cooking time of the yogurt marinated vegetables in biriyani. Can you provide a recipe, even if it means a mix of stove top and IP for brown rice basmati vegetable biriyani?
Barb says
I made this with lamb sausage, and it was delicious. I have to say it was too salty though – probably it didn’t help that I used sausage. I love that it used brown rice. I thought one cup of water wouldn’t be enough but it was the right amount.
Ashley - My Heart Beets says
Barb, that’s great to hear! Thanks for letting me know how it turned out 🙂